You could've bought puts friday, and made out like a bandit. I've been uber bearish for 9 months now and I am SHOCKED at the $2/share price being
reported. Many people on a bearish trading forum thought it was a misprint for $20/share price. Anyone who shorted @$30 on the close friday is gonna
make $28/share.

For Bear to go so cheaply says that their assets were even worse than anyone thought (and they thought it was bad). It was basically a bank run that
brought them down. Not a bank run in the northern rock sense but by large account holders.

So..... the Fed bails out Bear Stearns.... and then JP Morgan Chase gets to come in and basically steal the company? I don't know much about this
portion of the financial world but this seems pretty shady, and obvious.

Well, I know its against what most of the people like to talk about on here, but have been short BSC since the $76 so this now becomes my best trade
of all time. ABK and MBI were both up there, aong with the short on Enron back in 2000.

This is by far the best.

I have been short LEH for some time, rolling the options out each time at expiration. With all this news out there now........gonna let that run also
now.

Been long steel companies for about a month, probably willg et some pain tomorrow, but might just add to the positions now that I am closing out of
BSC tomorrow.

Anyone watching CNBC this morning? Instead of showing the normal canned replay till 5 AM or so, they're showing CNBC world. Looks like Asia is taking
a big dump. They already know tommorrow is gonna be bad.I wonder how big the gap down is gonna be tommorrow. Bear is a mighty big Domino to fall.
Everyone is saying Lehman could be next. S&P futures are showing a -30.00 ish open right now but Europe hasn't opened yet. Opex,regularly scheduled
rate cut with a surprise teaser, and a short trading week plus Goldman and Lehman report earnings this week.

Oh my if the average joe don't know what's going on with this he will by tomorrow. BTW hong kong said they wern't matching any rate cut interesting
fx happenings with the Yen/$ cross too.

The sale includes the building, which is valued at around a billion dollars. Maybe something's wrong with the economy?

Fox News
Bear's shares traded at more than $150 less than a year ago. The deal places Bear's stock at a 93% discount to Friday's close.

One of the larger losers in this deal might be British billionaire Joseph Lewis, who currently owns a 9.6% stake in Bear. In just a few months Lewis
lost close to $800 million.

However, the employees of Bear Stearns will also be impacted by the fire sale. Bear is one-third owned by its employees, and has always had an
"ownership culture" among its investment bankers and brokers. It was considered bad form for a Bear employee to sell their shares, and employees
often received annual bonuses in the form of stock. Those bonuses are now basically worthless.

The $236 million price tag makes Bear a company worth less than the cost of its building, located on Madison Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, which was
valued for approximately $1 billion, according to current real estate market estimates.

For Bear, the crisis started when market speculation grew that it might have to seize collateral -- mostly mortgage-backed securities worth next to
nothing -- from the private equity firm Carlyle Group.

Carlyle runs a bond fund and has come under intense pressure during the past week from creditors demanding collateral to back their
investments.

As speculation swelled in the market, investors, customers and lenders raced to withdraw their money or rescind their credit lines. By Thursday
night, Bear Stearns Chief Executive Alan Schwartz said, the bank realized the withdrawals might outpace the bank's resources...

I'm sorry but that sounds an awful lot like a good old fashioned bank run to me.

Just because Joe public wasn't lined-up on the street doesn't mean that customers (other institutions in this case) weren't lining up to get their
money and run for the doors.

The media won't call it what it was for obvious reasons so it's no wonder the public is having a hard time figuring out what exactly is going on.
.

What I meant by that....was not a run on the bank because it took place over the weekend. people could not get out. A run would allow the people a
chance to get out, but the bottled up market would not let them..... They woke up and found the doors of the bank shut.

Thats what I meant.

I don't need to be told what a bank run is .... I think I know it already, but thanks Gools

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